Making progress

I mentioned in my last post that my Fiancee has lost about ten pounds. Make that closer to 15. It's pretty amazing. She isn't following South Beach or Atkins, no-carb, no-fat, or anything. She's just eating more sensibly, watching her portions, and exercising a bit more.

I have taken to more sensible options, and have definitely ramped up the exercising. However, I still struggle with portion control.

Nonetheless, I have managed to lose a bit more weight.

At last weigh in, I am at 185.4 lbs, and 25.4% body fat. Surprisingly, that's almost ten pounds from my peak of 194 lbs, and 30.5% body fat. Well, I don't even know if that was my peak, just my first weigh in.

Even better, I have begun to get some comments, "are you losing weight?" Man, those are like gold.

Long Absense, weight in

There's nothing more obnoxious than a blog post that begins, "sorry it's been so long since I posted..." Like the rest of us are hanging on your next words. So, I won't do that. Even though it has been a while.

To be honest, I had grown a little discouraged about the whole weight loss thing. And yes, I know that's what the blog is for. Well, I finally got it back in gear. I have been eating more healthily, and working out more regularly.

Frankly, my Fiancee has been my big inspiration. Right before my eyes she has lost about ten pounds. Here's the crazy part. No specific diet, not even working out that much. So, yes, she can do it more healthily as well. But she is watching her portions, and making healthier choices. She regularly eats salads with little dressing. She has reduced her carb intake. Also, if we go out for a meal, we generally follow the meal by walking around.

So, I finally weighed in again.

The results:

Weight: 187.4 lbs
Body Fat: 27.4%

Yes, I am a long way from my goal. But I have made progress in both critical areas. Feels good. I'm back.

Are you a morning or evening exerciser?

I gotta be honest. I don't consider myself a morning person. In fact, going back to high school, any time I decided that I was going to start a morning workout program, it crashed and burned as quickly as it started. I have always heard that working out in the morning will give you more energy throughout the day. But my experiences have always been otherwise. I would wake up at 5:30am, and go for a run. By 11:00am, or certainly after lunch, I would be ready to hit snooze a few times.

So, my schedule is such that I carpool with my fiancee to work a couple of days per week, although our hours are different. She starts her day at 6:30am. My day starts with the living at around 8:00am. Normally, I get about an extra hour of Zzzz in the car before hitting the office. I decided last week that I could make better use of that time by hitting the gym.

For the first time in my life, the morning workout delivered all those wild benefits that I had heard so much about. I didn't need two stiff cups of coffee to start the day, I had an apple and some cereal for breakfast and felt great.

So, this will be part of my routine. Twice per week, I will workout in the morning. Of course, this will not take away from my evening workouts.

Gym, Diet and Weigh In

We went to the gym today! Woohoo! So, that's what it looks like inside. Seriously, I don't think we have been since before the holidays. In fact, I think I got actual exercise about three or four times in the last six weeks. Oh well, no sense beating myself up over it. Just gotta keep at it.

I made some vegetable soup last night. If you want the "recipe" and I'm using that word rather loosely, It's over on my personal finance blog, It's Just Money. A couple of alterations from the norm. I bought a bag of frozen shelled edamame (soy beans), and also threw in a bundle of spinach. Good stuff. Filling, yummy and incredibly lo-cal/lo-carb.

Well, I'm not sure if it was the soup or the gym, but my numbers improved.

Weight: 191 lbs.
Body Fat: 30.1%

Woohoo!

Yikes! My First Weigh In

Ouch. Well, the good news is that I finally got my new scale. The bad news is that I finally used my new scale. I put in my profile, male, 32 years old, 5'6". Exhaled, and stepped aboard.

Weight: 194.0 lbs.
Body Fat: 30.5%

Oh my! I'm no math major, but that's 59.17 pounds of FAT! I wish there was a muscle mass percentage scale as well. Or maybe I don't.

As I mentioned in the comments of my inaugural post my goal includes both weight loss and adding muscle mass. The way I see it, if I lose body fat by a greater percentage than my weight loss, I have added muscle mass. I'm assuming here that my bones, liver, brain do not fluctuate in weight. So, if I reduce my body fat percentage to 25% with no weight change that would mean I have lost 10.67 pounds of fat. Unless my brain got heavier, I would assume that meant a gain of 10.67 pounds of muscle.

Now, my plan is not to become a muscly, ripped 194 pound tree stump. I would like to lose some weight, as well as putting on muscle mass. Here are the goals:

Weight: 155 lbs.
Body Fat: 15%

If my math is correct, my body fat would be reduced to 23.25 pounds, for a loss of 33.92 pounds of fat. My total weight loss would be 39 pounds. So, I am going to assume that this means adding five pounds of muscle. It's not as much as I thought before I ran the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I would be happy at these levels.

I bought a scale

Well, just as in the case of someone starting out on a new budget, the most important thing to do is to determine where you are today. I would advise someone in this situation to prepare a full balance sheet to get a current snapshot. This, of course, gives you a benchmark from which to measure your progress as you continue the program.

So, consistent with that, I have purchased a scale. I purchased the Health O Meter Professional Body Fat Monitor Scale. It was only $39.99 from Target on-line, plus tax and shipping. Total came out to $48.68. The only downside is that I have to wait for delivery.

I wanted a scale that includes a body fat monitor because I didn't want this to be a weight loss only goal. So, after I receive the scale and have my first weigh in, I'll give a starting point.

Sore Throat and Cough

Well, I'm not kicking off the new year very healthfully. At some point last night, I developed a sore throat and a mild cough. Not anything to get worked up about, but also not something that I want to allow to get worse. So, I did what most people do. I headed down to my local CVS and bought them out of all things throat and cough related. Cough Drops, Airborne, Vitamin C lozenges, Zinc lozenges. I spent the rest of the night popping these things like they were candy. In fact, with all the cool flavors they have nowadays, it kind of was candy.

So, of course, a little bit of guilt swept over me. Oh man, have I just given myself a free pass to have candy all night? Well, let's check out the nutritional content comparisons.

One Halls Menthol Drop, 15 calories, 4g of carbs.
One Sweettart candy, 7.5 calories, 1.75g of carbs.


Holy crap! Other than the soothing effervescent feeling that I get from the cough drop, I might as well sit in front of the TV popping packets of sugar! Now to be fair, I could probably eat about triple the number of Sweettarts as I could cough drops.

I wonder about what the better options for soothing a sore throat are. I suppose I could sip on ginger lemon tea all night, but I think I would wake up several times for trips to the bathroom. No, I think I need sound uninterrupted sleep.

The other downside to having a cold is the difficulty in engaging in any physical activity. I don't want to jog around the block and work up a sweat for fear that I'm going to break out in a full blown flu.

Oh well, I guess I have to get well, then hit the gym extra hard.